


Better Off

by Feralmaeda



Series: Fortune Harmonious [1]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Apologies, Basically just some backstory stuff, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, I’m illiterate so I can’t tag things properly, Oh I can’t believe I almost forgot, The Togami family’s a fucking mess I don’t know what to tell you, Togami Byakuya-Centric, Ultimate Pianist Togami Byakuya, because Byakuya causes himself a lot of pain, maybe some internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 10:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18689689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feralmaeda/pseuds/Feralmaeda
Summary: Secrets are hard to keep when your family’s pastime is being at each other’s throats with blackmail and other similar things.Or, alternatively, Byakuya is both ruined and rescued, and finds a place for himself that he had never anticipated.





	Better Off

Byakuya Togami was meant to be the perfect heir.

Suave, intelligent, driven, and meticulous.

Those things he managed fine. Nothing was out of place, save for the relatives he’d long ago made forfeit the competition. 

He had his secrets, yes, but they were kept close to him, hidden behind locked door upon locked door upon bars and caltrops and perhaps, if he were feeling it, even a moat.

One could not be weak in the Togami family.

To show any weakness was defeat, and to be emotional meant to be weak, and so Byakuya made himself cold. 

He wasn’t allowed to feel, wasn’t allowed to speak without thinking, wasn’t allowed to do anything that would be to his disadvantage.

Someday, somehow, someone slipped past his careful defenses, weaseling out the hint of a suggestion of a rumor from some intermediate school ingrate, and he came tumbling from his pedestal.

The one to discover his secret was an older half-sibling of his, a sister as soon to be leaving high school as he was to be entering it, who was seemingly prepared to take over the Togami Corporation at a moment’s notice. She was clever as he was, and yet still more charming and ruthless. Looking back, Byakuya was glad it was her, as she was one of the wisest of the lot when it came to the use of words as weaponry, lethal as any gun.

Called to his father’s office, Byakuya had stood in the cold room looking his best, with his back straight and his expression sharp, calculating and yet aloof.

His half-sister was already there when he arrived, elegant as always in her intimidating, relaxed manner as she stood beside their father’s desk.

“For what have I been called?” Byakuya inquired, fixing cutting eyes on his half-sister and shoving his sense of unease easily into the abyss he’d constructed for such things, “Something of importance?”

His father observed him quietly, moments passing by in absolute silence.

“Is it true,” he spoke suddenly, speech impeccable as ever and booming in the quiet, “That you are homosexual?”

Byakuya, frigid as he already was, froze. 

Of all the secrets he kept, that one was most vital.

The position he was vying for, to someday be the head of the Togami family, was one that required him to be generally free of such controversy, and to someday have the sort of family that his father had assembled. 

Which would involve having many children of his own, with one woman or several. 

Perhaps he could try to find some sort of compromise? A cover, perhaps a woman in a similar situation. They could easily say that she or he was infertile, and adopt instead. That would be sure to keep him in the public’s favor.

Just as he was about to say as much, his father interrupted him, “Byakuya, while you are otherwise suited to being the head of the Togami Corporation, I’m afraid I can’t allow that to happen.”

In that instant, he was crushed.

Everything he’d worked towards.. 

Gone, in mere seconds.

Before Byakuya could graciously concede after gathering himself, his father continued to speak.

“However, you will remain a Togami.”

That gave him pause, and his jaw clicked shut.

“There is potential in you no matter your orientation, and the issue is simply that people will notice that you are not content,” his father explained, “I’ve also noticed a rise in the momentum of the LGBTQ+ community and its supporters as of late, so it isn’t too far of a leap to say that you will soon be able to stay within the corporation while also being open about your sexuality without worry of excessive backlash.”

So he was to be used, Byakuya surmised, as an eventual way of allying his family with the uprising community once it was closer to the norm. That was fine.

“Thank you, father,” Byakuya replied sincerely, “I will do my best not to disappoint.”

He knew he was dismissed at that point, his half-sister shooting him a simultaneously smug and reassuring look as he turned on his heel and left, and Byakuya very nearly smiled.

What a conniving, manipulative horror she was, he mused, she would do wonderful as the head. Not only was she able to get that information, but she was able to use it, and he suspected she had a hand in his being allowed to stay.

Secured within his family and left to find a new path, Byakuya spent his free time turning back to the things he once enjoyed sparingly, surprisingly able to feel the absence of the stress he’d put on himself before.

Things like reading, a little bit of writing, and playing piano.

Piano lessons had originally been mandatory for him, something he was made to do for the sake of poise and general knowledge within the higher class. He also knew very well that they served as a distraction.

When he touched a piano for the first time in what seemed like years, it felt both as if he’d never stopped and as if there was an eternity between then and the last. He remembered everything he’d learned, and playing again was as easy as breathing.

He spent the next couple years playing piano. His father had taken notice of his prodigal ability and had given him a grand amount of opportunities to expound upon and exploit it. Byakuya played for important guests, at extravagant parties, and played even at large musical events when asked. 

Such exposure was enough to gain him recognition beyond his family name, though that itself was no minor detail.

It was a short while after he began to compose that he was scouted by Hope’s Peak Academy. 

Not long after he publicly and perfectly performed one of his own complex compositions— “Martyr,” a personal favorite of his— Byakuya received a letter from the prestigious school, granting him entrance as the Ultimate Pianist, if he so wished.

Byakuya knew he’d be a fool to decline, and so he accepted, and was later admitted to Hope’s Peak Academy as Class 78’s Ultimate Pianist.

Perhaps he truly was better off having been dropped from the battle for the Togami family’s head.


End file.
